Stacey Harwood is a policy analyst for the New York State Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates gas, electric, water, and telephone service in New York State. She writes Critic’s Pick and Eat This Now columns for Time Out New York. Her poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming in The LA Times, Michigan Quarterly Review, Humor, Lit, Saveur, and elsewhere.

Jim Cummins is the author of The Whole Truth, (North Point Press, 1986), Portrait In A Spoon, (University of South Carolina Press,1997), Then & Now, (Ohio University Press, 2004). He is co-author, with David Lehman, of Jim & Dave Defeat the Masked Man (Soft Skull Press, 2005). His poems have been selected for The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994, 1995, 1998 and 2005, The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006), and 180 More, edited by Billy Collins. Cummins has been curator of the Elliston Poetry Collection at the University of Cincinnati since 1975, where he is also Professor of English. Read his BAP blog posts here.

Jenny Factor’s poem collection Unraveling at the Name (Copper Canyon Press) won a Hayden Carruth Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Factor’s poems and reviews have appeared in the Paris Review and more than a dozen anthologies, including The Best American Erotic Poems (Scribner, 2008). Her work has been supported by an Astraea Grant in poetry. Jenny received her M.F.A. in Literature from Bennington College, and her BA from Harvard College. She currently teaches and serves as the Core Faculty in poetry at Antioch University Los Angeles’ low-residency MFA Program. Learn more about Jenny Factor here. Read her BAP blog posts here.(Painting by Catherine Bryant)

Joy Katz is editor-at-large for Pleiades. Her poetry collections are The Garden Room (Tupelo Press, 2006) and Fabulae (Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), and she co-edited the recent anthology Dark Horses: Poets on Lost Poems (University of Illinois Press, 2006). Her poems and essays appear in Fence, Colorado Review, Seneca Review, Court Green and the New York Times Book Review, among other places. She teaches poetry writing at The New School and NYU and lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and young son. Read her BAP blog posts here.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of two books of poetry Funny (University of Wisconsin, 2005)and The Next Ancient World (Tupeloe Press, 2001). Her non-fiction books are Doubt: A History (HarperOne, 2004 and The Happiness Myth (HarperOne, 2007).She earned her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Columbia University. She teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at The New School and is a fellow of The New York Institute for the Humanities. Read more about Jennifer Michael Hecht here. Read her BAP blog posts here.

Bill is a photographer/filmmaker whose most recent book
of portraits of the collaborative self is entitled bad behavior, (Rizzoli). Bill is currentlly at work on a new portrait collection entitled I Hear America Singing, America in Portraits of the Collaborative Self. Hayward is also in production
on Asphalt, Muscle and Bone, a film about a man at risk, the persistence of imagination and the impossibility of love. Images from Hayward's work can be viewed at billhayward.com and at reddressfilms.com. See his BAP blog posts here.

Laura Orem is a writer, artist, and teacher. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and is a Writing Fellow at Goucher College. Her poetry and essays have appeared in many journals, both in print and online, including Nimrod, heART (Human Equity Through Art), Wordwrights, The Montserrat Review, Poets Against the War, and The Writer's Chronicle. Orem lives in Red Lion, PA with six cats, four dogs, two sheep, two sons, one horse, and one husband. Read her BAP blog posts here.

Elizabeth D. Samet is the author of SOLDIER'S HEART: Reading Literature Through Peace & War at West Point (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007) and Willing Obedience: Citizens, Soldiers, and the Progress of Consent in America, 1776–1898 (Stanford University Press, 2003). She received her B.A. from Harvard and her Ph.D. in English literature from Yale. She is a Professor of Literature at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The opinions expressed on this blog are Samet's own and not necessarily those of the U.S. Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense. Read her BAP blog posts here.

Mitch Sisskind (shown here as The Kalashnikover Rebbe) was born in Chicago, and has lived in Los Angeles since 1986. He is the autor of two books of short stories: Visitations (1984) and Dog Man Stories (1993). Read his BAP blog posts here.